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OUR REVOLUTION

Name: OUR REVOLUTION
Author: Bernie Sanders
ISBN: 978-1-250-13292-5

A FUTURE TO BELIEVE IN

by Bernie Sanders ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 15, 2016

There’s not much what-if here and certainly no indecision. Instead, as if rallying the troops, Sanders writes confidently of...

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A dark horse speaks, advancing, after the fact, “an agenda for a new America.”

Leave it to Sanders to be contrary: most politicos, Trump included, write their campaign books while still campaigning. We can only imagine the author believes that his efforts will be ongoing and continual; in that interest, this book capably captures the main points of his message: Washington is corrupt, money needs to be taken out of politics, and the working class needs a fair shake and, yes, a new deal. Sanders begins on a note that could only have come after the race, of course: namely, that nearly 1.5 million people attended his rallies, and his campaign “attracted the energetic support of hundreds of thousands of volunteers in every state in the country.” Here, the author, writing very much as he speaks (“Fortunately, we won that battle,” he says of a Republican effort to cut aid to disabled veterans, “but it sickens me that we even had to wage the fight”), takes a long look at some of the planks that he and his movement pressed onto the Democratic Party platform in the 2016 election, including immigration reform, the $15-per-hour federal minimum wage, and the breakup of banks too big to fail. In the place of any regrets comes plenty of fire and a little ire, as when he impatiently recalls what he considers to be Hillary Clinton’s mischaracterization of his position on guns. “This was an unfair attack,” he writes, “but one that I didn’t handle well.” He adds, “to suggest, as Clinton did, that I was somehow sympathetic to the gun lobby was absurd.” Most of the author’s scorn is reserved, though, for those who stand in the way of his common-sense if sometimes-technical recommendations on such matters as capital gains taxation, Medicare expansion, and infrastructure spending.

There’s not much what-if here and certainly no indecision. Instead, as if rallying the troops, Sanders writes confidently of a program that’s sure to be revisited in 2020.

Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-250-13292-5

Page Count: 464

Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2016

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
IT'S OK TO BE ANGRY ABOUT CAPITALISM
by Bernie Sanders with John Nichols

- BOOK REVIEW
WHERE WE GO FROM HERE
by Bernie Sanders

- BOOK REVIEW
BERNIE SANDERS GUIDE TO POLITICAL REVOLUTION
by Bernie Sanders ; adapted by Kate Waters

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)